All in a tribe

Rachana Chettri
KATHMANDU, NOV 04 – The Digital Tribe, Understanding Who We Are in the Age of Hyper Connectivity, an exhibition of artworks that explore how digital connectedness has changed the definition of the modern human ‘self’, presents four separate installations by the Kathmandu University’s third year Studio Art students, and Danish-Bulgarian artist duo Sofia Burchardi and Plamen Bontchev. The works ask the exhibition-goer to embark on an exploration within the self—marking how technology and the Internet have changed our lives, and perceptions of ourselves, in recent years.
The Internet, as a phenomenon, is still rather new in Nepal. Even four years ago, most mobile phones were hardly connected to the web. These days, telecom service providers have reached most villages in the country, and the Internet is easily accessed by around 43 percent of the country’s population (and this is according to a 2010 data). This has obviously changed the ways in which we view ourselves and the world around us. And it is true for all of us—whether we live in a remote village in Nepal, and are connected to the Internet via our phones, or in a more affluent part of the world where Internet connectivity is something one hardly needs to worry about.
Augmented Dieties, an installation artwork by Burchardi and Bontchev, explores how the individual finds himself transformed because of this connection to the online world. The installation invites the observers to actively engage with it. Four pairs of flip-flops—each with very noticeable logos (those of Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter), without which many of us cannot imagine our lives these days—are arranged in front of a pair of black curtains, inside which a bulb shines above what looks like a normal portrait. The portrait is anything but
‘normal’ though; it is a lenticular photograph, a flicker picture which changes with the vantage point of the viewer.
Only when one stands completely still does one see the constant picture of an individual here. Otherwise, the portraits within the lenticular photo simply morph and change to show different people. The artists are creating a dialogue between the art and the viewer, engaging him or her in a discussion of how our ‘online lives’ are “seemingly disengaged from our corporal existence”, and how that gives us the freedom to “change attitudes and identities without consequence.” Indeed, many of us find it easier to shed inhibitions online, voice opinions we would never have been able to in person, and find ourselves communicating with people who would never have come into our lives were it not for the World Wide Web.
All You Can’t Eat, an installation work by Shreejana Shakya, Rabindra Shrestha, Karma Gurung and Suresh Maharjan explores the idea of how the Internet feeds us with a whole host of information that has become an inextricable part of our existence. The installation work, composed of pieces from old keyboards arranged upon plates and bowls, even glasses (as if for a lavish dinner) equates the Internet and its repository of information with food, the most basic component of our sustenance. There is also a distinct Nepaliness attached to this work, as it employs the use of a tapari, a traditional bass plate and a karuwa, alongside the more ‘modern’ porcelain bowls, plates and saucers.
Bhawana Ghimirey, Pramesh Sherchan, Rabin Maharjan and Roshan Sakha, artists who worked together on Verse, also present a distinctly Nepali flair in their installation. Composed of eight stone slates (upon which an assortment of computer codes and http addresses have been carved) are suspended above a neat square painted with red dirt (the traditionally Nepali raato mato). On top of the red surface are placed straw mats, stone carving tools, ancient looking pens, a broom, and an assortment of other things one would find in a typically Nepali house. Although most of us in Kathmandu hardly live in such homes anymore, the artists’ use of elements that are so obviously clichéd, force the viewer to question where, in our Nepali identities, all these new digital tools and implements fit.
In what is perhaps the most interactive of these installations, Saran Tandukar, Shiva Prasad Upadhyaya and Nhooja Tuladhar present A Huge Bit, “a small attempt at experiencing what torrenting would be in a physical sense.” Numerous odds and ends—a few apples, abandoned and antiquated speakers, bundles of clothing, shampoo sachets, decorative pieces, everything one can imagine, in fact—find themselves placed in what looks like a cart made of newspapers. A papier mache stone spout throws a ‘torrent’ of old clothes onto the cart, and many other objects—old books, CDs, and cassettes—spill out onto the floor.
The artists made a five-hour journey from their art school to the Siddhartha Art Gallery, urging people to trade stuff with them along the way. A video of this journey, where people trade stuff with the art students plays on a CRT monitor beside this ‘Saataa Saat CART’. As the gallery visitor probes into the stuff inside the cart, he or she sees elements of people’s lives on display as art. Each piece of clothing that makes up the torrent gushing forth from the water spout has its own story (some are even visible on the video that continues to play on the monitor placed just beside), and one might even trade something of one’s own with the stuff there to be part of this real-world torrent, something that really anybody can understand.
The Digital Tribe is interesting not only because it presents before viewers works of art that invite them to be a physical part of it, but also because it treats them as part of a ‘tribe’ that the Internet has created on its own accord over the years. After all, while not all of us may be familiar with specific developments in technology, we all employ these technological advances to full use—connecting with one other, and sharing information in real-time via the marvels of modern technology.

The exhibition will continue at Siddhartha Art Gallery till November 15
(The Kathmandu Post)